wilderness for mineral wealth; as 1982 be
gan, the number pending topped a thou
sand. A dozen bore the "recommended"
stamp. Preservationists rallied and attacked
with words, marches, and lawsuits. It was
environmental warfare.
Oilmen saw it as a last chance to tap wil
derness fields before they were locked away
forever. "Congress never intended to deny
public access to mineral wealth," Don Allen
of the Montana Petroleum Association told
me. He cited the Wilderness Act's provision
for leasing through 1983.
Preservationists noted that this same act
required mineral surveys of potential wil
dernesses to prevent locking away big
deposits. The Wilderness Society, after
making its own assessment, declared that
present wilderness held only about 1.1 per
cent of national oil potential and 1.2 of gas,
while other federal lands held 30 and 22 per
cent respectively; why not fully explore
those nonwilderness lands first?
The fight soon focused on those million
and a half roadless acres astride the Conti
nental Divide in the Bob Marshall, Scape
goat, and Great Bear Wildernesses of
Montana. With the best habitat for grizzly
bears and the largest herd of bighorn sheep
south of Alaska, with room to roam for thou
sands of deer, with eagles riding the skies,
with cutthroat trout teeming in the spar
kling headwaters of the Missouri and Co
lumbia Rivers, this favored national forest
realm spelled paradise to outdoorsmen.
Raising the ante for oilmen was the area's
location squarely in a north-south swath
across the intermountain West known as the
Overthrust Belt. Here pleats in the earth's
crust-the handiwork of massive overrid
ing eons ago-contribute not only to scenic
grandeur but also to mineral enrichment. I
talked about it with Don Allen, whose Mon
tana group is one of several whose members
are eager for petroleum bonanzas.
"The Overthrust Belt has oil as well as
gas," he said. "The gas prospects look best.
Down the road this country will need much
more natural gas-and not just for heating.
Most people don't realize that 30 percent of
our crop yield is due to fertilizer made from
natural gas."
Some 700 lease applications soon had the
three Montana wildernesses in their sights,
Our NationalForests:Problems in Paradise
and growing opposition coalesced into the
Bob Marshall Alliance. The battling soon
embroiled the Secretary of the Interior with
Congress, the courts, and the media. The
contest carried more than the usual freight
of emotion, for at stake was not just any wil
derness but the one that honored Bob Mar
shall, revered with Aldo Leopold as a father
of our wilderness system.
Secretary Watt put wilderness leasing on
hold-for the purpose, he said, of letting
Congress consider amending the law, in ef
fect a moratorium until after the November
elections. Defenders momentarily lowered
their guard against what they had come to
call the "bombing of the Bob" (the expres
sion plays on the oil prospector's need to ex
plode small charges just above ground level
or at shallow depth in order to record their
seismic bounce). But leasing and explora
tion continued on nonwilderness lands, in
cluding some recommended as wilderness.
Since exploration often includes, besides
seismic blasts, the building of roads for test
drilling rigs, the quest will rob an area of the
very quality that defines it as wilderness.
I SAW WHAT may happen to the Bob by
visiting two nearby game ranges already
being explored. The Sun River elk range,
whose herd of 3,000 is the largest in the
lower 48 states, still awaits its first drills. I
saw it on a glowing October day when
cottonwoods and aspens laced the Rocky
Mountain Front with pure gold amid the
light-devouring greens of pines and firs. The
elk still ranged the heights near the Bob,
spurning the gentler valleys while Indian
summer lasted. The only jarring sights were
a few square yards of mangled brush at
intervals along a line of seismic soundings.
Next door, the 9,000-acre Blackleaf game
range is already cored by three gas wells.
The rig of a fourth rose just inside the adja
cent Lewis and Clark National Forest.
Around each finished well, 10,000 or
more square feet of trees and brush had been
abraded away. The clearings included a
dumping pool for oil wastes, a noisome goo.
From each well a 50-foot-wide bald swath
will delineate a pipeline leading to a collect
ing plant. Because this gas is heavy with poi
sonous hydrogen sulfide, the collector will
be a "sweetener plant," which reduces the
311